Multiple Rebuy Strategy in Poker Tournaments

Multiple rebuy tournament structures often make small buy-in tournaments extremely loose and aggressive during the rebuy period. This is especially true if the rebuy chips are sold at a discount from the initial buy-in chips, and even more true if players get more chips with a rebuy than they got for the initial buy-in. These types of multiple rebuy structures are common for small buy-in tournaments.

Wild betting during a rebuy period is also encouraged in some tournaments by policies that allow players who lose all of their chips during the rebuy period to make double rebuys. The crazy betting and all-ins that result add an immense luck factor to everyone's results during the rebuy period.

Essentially this type of tournament starts out as a lottery, with players buying chances at lucky hands. With enough players willing to both make and call all-in bets on draws or modest hands like top pair, there are simply going to be an inordinate number of big wins with mediocre cards and suck-outs. At the end of the rebuy period, after an hour of these constant all-in confrontations, there will be a few lucky players sitting there with massive chip stacks.

When rebuys are unlimited and rebuy chips are discounted, it is a mistake to play solid conservative poker during the rebuy period. Got that? A mistake. You've got to get in there and mix it up or you will inevitably find yourself on a short stack when the rebuy period ends. To be competitive after the rebuy period in this type of event, you should try to at least double the maximum number of chips you can buy at any one time. You cannot expect to do this with conservative play because you can't expect to be dealt enough premium hands.

Keep in mind that many of these fast format tournaments have blind levels that last only 15 minutes. This means that at the end of the rebuy period, you will be entering the fifth blind level. You must take a shot at making some money during that first hour of wild play to give yourself a meaningful chance of survival when the "real" tournament begins.

Al the 2004 World Series of Poker, tournament pro Daniel Negreanu raised a lot of eyebrows in the $1,000 rebuy event by-making 27 rebuys. He later defended his loose rebuy strategy by saying that he didn't mind buying a lot of chips for the players at his table, because he felt he could outplay them and get the chips back. Some players felt that Negreanu erred in investing so much money in rebuys. Whether or not Negreanu played too loosely during the rebuy portion of the tournament might be debatable, but as the coin-flip tournament examples showed, a skilled player's willingness to rebuy as many times as necessary to remain in the tournament is not disadvantageous in itself - Negreanu did finish second in that tournament, a finish that paid $100,000, profiting $72,000 despite the high rebuy costs.